Saturday, July 23, 2016

NCTD cutting Del Mar residents off from beach

A plea for mutual assistance from our neighbors to the south on SANDAG/NCTD bullying cities in the rail corridor:

We are about to have the same problem in Del Mar, with a twist. NCTD is talking about enforcing illegal crossings starting August 1, 2016 (mentioned in our Sea Level Rise Technical Advisory Committee meeting on July 21, where NCTD planners were present).

In Del Mar, the train is single-tracked and runs between 1.5 miles of homes and the beach with no legal crossings in place.

We need a multi-city plan from Del Mar to Encinitas to protect our access to the ocean and our unique, invaluable natural setting.

Enforcing a state law is bullying when special interests, end up determining which laws are passed, and how they are interpreted and executed.

The greater common good isn't the real reason for this threatened "enforcement," but greater profits for the select few. The authorities have deep pockets, and are swayed, heavily, by their donors, their financial backers.

Requiring Encinitas to provide more affordable housing (we can quibble on what affordable is) is somehow the bullying of special interests over the greater good?

Legislators listen to affordable housing advocates (and developers) because they see cities like Encinitas doing very little to address the housing shortage. That's why they pass these ham-handed laws to try to address it.

If you believe in climate change and air pollution reduction then you want to minimize auto travel as much as possible. The disparity will never be completely solved here in Encinitas but we don't even try. Accessory units are part of the solution but they aren't the whole solution. It sounds like the "greater common good" doesn't extend past the city limits.

The reliance on motor vehicles was an error in judgment and a manipulation by the auto and related industries since the 1940's. Now we have an energy inefficient system that barely works and is subject to collapse with gas prices or infrastructural damage (earthquakes). Widening I-5 will achieve little to nothing - the system is over-loaded. Yet more high-density housing is being pushed, without regard to the obvious limitations of such activity. It is the lemming syndrome - over the brink! Our leaders are all short-sighted or down right corrupt.

The Leucadia rail corridor is 2.5 miles long. There are legal crossings at each end and in the middle. Guess what happens. People walk across the tracks where it's convenient cause it's too far to the ends or the middle.

The hundreds of people who park in the dirt of the Leucadia rail corridor are trespassing. NCTD and the city ignore the law because without that parking, the businesses on the west side of 101 would die.

Encinitas sat on its hands when the opportunity to below grade the train came along.Solana Beach asked for the money from the Feds and got it.Lowering the tracks should have been one of those " shovel ready " projects the president was talking about. Unfortunately I see about 10 years worth of lawsuits before a single spade of dirt gets turned.

If you lower the tracks and fence the trench, you need to build overpasses to cross the trench. In Solana Beach some of the overpasses are quite high up over the natural grade. People who live on San Elijo and Vulcan won't like that. The no trail people will not like the fence preventing crossing.

There are three ped/bike crossings in Solana — one ramp at the Amtrak station placed from rim to rim of the trench. There's one high overhead crossing south of Lomas Santa Fe and another north of LSF. Ramps would be fine for crossings in Encinitas.

The funding for trenching the Encinitas tracks should come by reallocating the $6.5 billion SANDAG will spend by 2040 in the North Coast transportation corridor. Now, $5.68 billion of that is for the freeway and $820 million is for rails. The freeway dollars have to go down, and the rail dollars have to go up.

To have a level crossing above lowered tracks requires 26 feet of clearance. The crossing north of Lomas Santa Fe is arched to gain the necessary clearance. Lomas Santa Fe is flat because the trench is deeper.

The problems with the crossings at Chesterfield and Leucadia Blvd. will only be solved with lowered tracks.

This is just another example of guess who?, sssssssssss, who during his time serving only himself on Sandag and NCTD, got absolutely nothing done for this community's welfare. Wonder why Solana got theirs and Carlsbad will be getting theirs and we won't be getting squat, this is one reason.

Any candidate that hitches their wagon in anyway to this bully of a cretin, deserves a future of finding another job elsewhere. It won't be with us here in Encinitas. His rot cannot be allowed to infect this community again.

The rail trail will be fenced, but with lowered tracks and/or at grade crossings the division of our community can be minimized. Solana's high crossover bridges are not the answer. At grade crossings are. Tunneling under the tracks will only serve to ever prevent the tracks from being lowered while our neighbor city's get what their citizens want.

Ask Any Candidate what they will fight for on your behalf in regards to rail trail envisioning. Every declared candidate seems mute so far, so don't expect much from any of them on this crucial issue for everyone here.

To be fair, when they doled out the $ for the lowering of the tracks in Solana Beach, Stocks was not on the council. That said, he did us no favors, especially in Leucadia, with his lack of community engagement with NCTD.

Tony on the other hand, is doing a great job working with Matt Tucker and NCTD.

You will not get At Grade Legal crossing. You can ask, but NCTD is not going to go with that approach. It simply isn't going to happen.

And as far Carlsbad, I know they're researching/requesting a below grade crossing at Elm, but that's either really far off, or won't happen at all.

So before we go off half cocked about lowering the tracks, let's remember the actual true narrative of what happened when, and why it happened.